Should I embrace CSS3?

I would love to but…

I’ve noticed a few designers I very much respect “namedropping” CSS3 as of late. Unless something changed, or what current web browsers support has suddenly been turned on sideways, many cool things that I would love to do in CSS using CSS3 just wont do me any good for about 70% of my visitors across the board. This may be a bit of a tirade, but let’s look at which browsers currently play nice with CSS3, and what the browser penetration rate is for those lucky enough to see the effects of CSS3.

Here’s a opening bit of text I found on http://www.css3.info/preview/

Many exciting new functions and features are being thought up for CSS3. We will try and showcase some of them on this page, when they get implemented in either Firefox, Konqueror, Opera or Safari/Webkit.

Where is IE in this bit? According to w3schools, IE still has is the browser of choice for about 40% of their users, and Mashable reports that 25% of users still use IE6. I’d love to see 70% of the browser use on Firefox or Safari with the other 30% on Oprah or IE, but that is just not the case.

Ok, let me digress a bit, I’m not saying that CSS3 wont make things easier for a web dev trying to make his own life easier, I’m simply saying that until the world no longer acknowledges the existence of browsers like IE6, and all CSS layouts are displayed equal, CSS3 is just as useful to me as a CSS conditional statement for IE6.

Also, as I have a love for newer technology don’t harass me if i decide to take on a few tutorials or examples using CSS in the coming weeks or months, I think I’ve just come to the conclusion so far that until CSS3 plays nice with IE for the majority of my IE users I’m just better off finding other ways to accomplish things.

Sources:
http://www.css3.info
http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support-css
http://westciv.com/iphonetests/